by Penny Grubb
A fat pony plodded its way towards her the other side of the fence, but as she watched, its head shot up, its eyes opened wide and it bounded away. Annie felt a jolt of alarm then a woman marched past with a bundle of heavy-duty tinsel glittering in her arms, Tina’s eccentric method for subduing her charges with festive spirit.
She walked down the track towards the stable blocks, her gaze raking every corner, looking for the girls. Tina emerged from a door in a wall and raised her hand in greeting.
‘My last appointment didn’t turn up,’ said Annie, ‘so I’m a bit early.’ She spoke the lie to Tina’s back and saw the woman was too busy shouting orders across the yard to take in what she said. Early had no meaning round here, but Annie guessed that late was a cardinal crime.
‘Come and talk while I plait up, if you like,’ Tina threw over her shoulder.
Annie followed to one of the big stables and watched as an enormous beast, four times Boxer’s size, submitted to some complicated work on its mane.
‘What have you decided to do about the three girls?’ she asked. ‘I was talking to Colonel Ludgrove and it was clear he knew nothing about the cheating. I don’t want to put my foot in it.’
‘Officially I’m doing nothing. I don’t want any talk outside the stables.’ Tina gave a vicious tug at the horse’s mane. Annie watched the animal brace its neck. ‘The Tunbridge brat is trying to pull a fast one, but she’ll get a rude awakening when I get my hands on her this afternoon. I’ve the reputation of the stables to keep up. It’s a knife-edge business these days, running a place like this. There are people who’d take advantage.’
‘So they get away with it?’ Not that Annie cared, she just wanted Tina to keep talking.
‘No way. I’ve threatened all three of them to within an inch of their lives. I suppose Laura’ll spill the beans to Ma and Pa at some stage but they won’t want it broadcast. And I’ve barred them all from riding out for a fortnight. They’re to have a lesson with me in the school once a week. First one today. That’ll quieten them down. They’ll have to shell out extra, too.’
‘But Laura and Kay were out on their ponies on Saturday. We saw them.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Tina spoke with barely suppressed anger and another tug at a handful of coarse hair. The horse gave Annie a reproachful look. ‘I hadn’t had the chance to speak to them and they slipped out. Laura didn’t bring Boxer back, the little minx. She knew I’d ground her.’
Annie felt frustrated disappointment at Tina’s words. ‘She’ll not turn up this afternoon then, will she? None of them will.’
‘Oh, they will. She acts without thinking, that child. If she wants to keep her footing in the area, she’ll not cross me. I could have her out of the Pony Club. I haven’t gone running after her. She’ll have to come down this afternoon and eat humble pie.’
‘What will she have done with Boxer?’
‘They all have stables at home. She probably took him to Colonel Ludgrove’s to start with, but she might have taken him to her place. Her parents are away. I’d put money on Mally being in on it. Mally can get away with murder while she’s with her grandfather.’
‘Won’t Kay be in on it, too?’
‘She wasn’t at the time, no. Kay came back. She told me Laura had nipped round to Mally’s and she’d be down later. Kay’s no actress. I’d have seen it if she’d been trying to pull the wool.’ She glanced at her watch and then over Annie’s shoulder to the yard beyond. ‘They’re late. Probably huddled round the corner talking tactics.’
By the time Tina had finished with the big horse and come back out of the stable, her expression was hard. ‘I don’t know what they think they’re playing at, but they’re not getting away with it. D’you have a phone on you? I’ll get on to the Dearloves, Kay’s people.’
Annie handed her phone across and followed Tina as she raced across to shout more orders at more people and horses, whilst speaking into Annie’s phone.
‘Yes … yes. OK, thanks.’
She clicked it off and handed it back. ‘Kay’s in bed ill. That explains why she isn’t here.’
‘Isn’t Laura staying with her?’
‘No, she’s gone to Mally’s while her parents are away.’
‘I thought her parents disapproved of Mally.’
‘Yes, especially with her mother away. They know Colonel Ludgrove’s too old to cope. But the girls will have done as they pleased once Laura’s parents had gone.’
‘I had the impression Laura was better friends with Kay than Mally.’
‘You never know who’s best friends in that trio. Mally can be a bit wild, but she’s not bad for Laura. Laura gets wrapped in cotton wool. If she’d been a bit bolder they might not have needed to cheat. I blame Mally’s father. He promised to take her part of the time, but then gave her some cock and bull story about a business trip. Then again, Ludgrove can’t abide him so he’d keep hold of Mally just to prove a point.’
A point that might be the death of him in the end, thought Annie, remembering the drawn features.
Tina led Annie to the house and picked up her own phone. ‘I’ll try Ludgrove, but it looks as though they aren’t going to show.’
Annie struggled to hide her frustration. She had to find a way to talk to those girls.
‘No reply.’ Tina put the phone down. ‘But still, it’ll mean you haven’t had a wasted journey. I’ve time to tell you whatever it is you want to know.’
Annie smiled and cast about for a question with a credible link to Terry Martin that would get Tina on to the technicalities of her horses. Then she could let Tina rabbit on for long enough to make her visit seem legit.
‘I don’t understand why they cheated or how it worked,’ she lied, knowing that Tina’s anger had burnt so bright when she’d discovered it, she wouldn’t remember what she had and hadn’t already told Annie.
Tina explained again that Boxer was near-phobic about the concrete blocks that made up that particular obstacle. ‘Mally tried to coach Laura to get him to jump them in line with Kay. I think they got him going in the colonel’s garden, but he wasn’t going to touch them in the dip in the field. That’s why she had her little insurance policy of stewarding that fence so she could mark them clear and trust to luck no one noticed.’
‘Why didn’t it work in the field if it worked at Colonel Ludgrove’s?’
‘It looks different, smells different. He’s an odd little tyke. He’ll trust a rider with most things, but not those blocks. He jumps blind with Laura, no problem.’
‘Blind?’ Annie imagined the small pony with a flapping cloth blindfold.
‘When they can’t see what’s at the other side, where the land falls away, or it’s just too big to see over. A pony that trusts its rider’ll jump anyway.’
‘Why in that bit of the garden? Why couldn’t they have used the proper paddock round the back?’ Annie, who just wanted Tina to keep talking and who’d never had a garden in her life, felt a measure of indignation on the colonel’s behalf at the wreckage they’d left of his lawn.
Tina laughed. ‘Have you tried shifting one of those blocks? That’s why we always have that jump down in the dip.’
‘Where do they come from?’ Annie asked, suddenly curious. Now she thought about it, memories popped up everywhere. Those elaborate painted structures in Doris Kitson’s garden were based on the same shape. ‘They’re all over Milesthorpe.’
‘There are loads of them up on the cliff where the camp was. Military thing. It was abandoned some years ago. Most of it’s fallen over now. Heaven knows what they used them for but once Milesthorpe cottoned on there were car suspensions groaning with the things. I don’t know how many people put their backs out. You can still see them all along the cliffs, right up to where poor old Charles Tremlow popped his clogs.’
It jarred to hear Tina speak about him so casually. ‘That’ll be a blow to Mally’s grandad, won’t it?’
‘Oh yes. It’s like the end of an era to see that trio gone.
We called them Last of the Summer Wine. Charles Tremlow was the timid one. And Balham was the scruff. I don’t know what the colonel’ll do for company. He won’t even have the church to fall back on now Tremlow’s gone. Doris’ll grab his place as church warden. She’s been after it for years.’
That church connection again. Annie took a surreptitious look at her watch. She’d done enough now for the visit to appear genuine.
From Tina’s, she headed to Colonel Ludgrove’s. She couldn’t target Kay, who was ill, and didn’t know what she’d say to the colonel, but she had to try and find at least one of the girls.
Annie knocked at the colonel’s door and listened to the sound echo through the house. After a moment, she heard Mally’s voice, ‘It’s all right, it isn’t Tina. It’s Annie,’ and understood why Tina’s call hadn’t been answered.
The door opened and Annie followed Mally through to the living room.
‘No, no. Don’t get up,’ she said to Colonel Ludgrove, who huddled in a chair by the unlit fire. ‘I heard you weren’t well. Are you feeling better now?’
‘Oh, not so bad. Old bones, you know. Not as young as I was. Just got up as a matter of fact.’
Mally slumped ostentatiously into a chair, lower lip protruding.
‘I’ve just been down to the stables,’ Annie said. She ignored the poisonous glance Mally shot her and smiled at the girl. ‘Tina expected you this afternoon.’
‘Huh! Go on my own and have old Hain in my face? No thank you. I’ll wait till Kay and Laura can go, too.’
‘Isn’t Laura here?’
‘Nah, she was going to stay but that old fart Tunbridge got all sniffy just ’cos we’re poor now and made her stay with Kay.’
‘Mel!’ The colonel’s tone snapped Mally upright in the chair. ‘There’s no need for that talk.’
‘Sorry, Grandad.’
Annie found herself unsure whether it was the insult to Mr Tunbridge or Mally claiming to be poor that had earned the rebuke.
Mally looked subdued for a couple of seconds, then began, ‘Dad says …’ only to be interrupted by her grandfather.
‘Your father’s a renegade, a wastrel.’
Annie shifted in her chair, uncomfortable that the family feud should be played out in her presence and that Mally’s father should be denigrated in front of his daughter.
‘He’s not, Grandad. He had to go on a business trip. He couldn’t help it.’
The colonel gave a contemptuous sniff. ‘He didn’t look very businesslike when I saw him the other day.’
Mally pounced on this bait. ‘When did you see him? Where?’
‘A day or two ago, talking to young Laura.’
‘Why didn’t he come to see me? That’s not fair.’
For the first time, Annie found her sympathies veering the other way. Mally was only thirteen; it wasn’t fair to goad her about her father like this. She decided to drop a small bombshell into the exchange.
‘I’m glad you’re feeling better, Colonel. I wonder if I could ask you about this?’
She pulled the key from her pocket and held it out for them to see, watching closely to see how Mally reacted. Nothing. They both stared blankly. It matched Maz’s assertion that the girls had never seen it.
‘What is it?’ Mally asked.
Annie gave an abridged account of Maz handing it over to her. Mally shrank in her chair. The colonel looked aghast.
‘I need to know the truth,’ she ended, ‘before I decide what to do next.’
Mally leapt to her feet. ‘I think you’re stupid and you should just mind your own business.’ She flounced to the door.
‘Back here, Mel, and face the music,’ the colonel said.
To Annie’s surprise, Mally obeyed. There was some code between them that Annie had yet to crack.
‘Here, young lady.’ The colonel spoke without anger but with a firmness that Mally complied with. The girl stood on the hearth rug in front of him, her gaze down at her feet. ‘An explanation.’
‘It’s Mr Balham. People said they didn’t know where he went walkabout. Well, we knew ’cos we saw him up there. We tried to get in but it was real well locked.’
‘And where did this scoundrel from Hull come into the picture? I’ve warned you about people like him.’
‘I … uh … we … one of us … it was probably Laura … told Maz about it and so we showed him. It looks old but Maz said Mr Balham had new locks on and all that. We just wanted to see in. You can’t see through the gap at the back. Then we showed Maz where Mr Balham lived. Maz told us to, and Maz saw the key and he said he could get us a copy made.’
‘And did this young vagabond break into Mr Balham’s house?’
‘We didn’t tell him to. We didn’t go in the house.’ For all Mally’s discomfort, she couldn’t disguise her admiration for Maz’s bravado. ‘He said he’d got the key but we said we didn’t want it.’
The colonel looked thunderous and Mally for once remained subdued. Annie couldn’t second guess what sat worst with the colonel, the stalking of his friend Edward Balham or Mally’s association with Maz.
‘I’m obliged to you for bringing this to my attention, Miss Raymond. So’s young Mel. She could have taken the whole business to the police, Mel, and then where would you be? Say thank you.’
Mally’s sullen gaze met Annie’s. ‘Thank you,’ she muttered.
Annie itched to ask about the faxed page, but knew she was on thin ice with this interview already, and didn’t know which of the three had sent it with Maz. She’d go back to him and get the facts straight.
She tried a more oblique angle, and asked, ‘What was Terry Martin to do with it?’
The colonel stared at her. ‘What did that scallywag have to do with any of this?’
‘I thought Mally said something about him,’ Annie lied, watching the girl closely.
Mally looked blank and then indignant. ‘Nothing. He had nothing to do with any of it. We didn’t know anything about him killing Mr Balham in that shed.’
Annie saw a look of pain cross the colonel’s features at this mention of his friend. Annie was glad she’d told him it wasn’t Edward Balham in the building on the cliff, but of course he knew his old friend was missing. Maybe he’d already connected him to the murder.
She murmured conventional condolences about Tremlow and they had a stilted exchange. The colonel struggled to hide how uncomfortable he was at a close friend taking a coward’s way out.
As Annie rose to go, the colonel looked up at her. ‘May I keep the key?’ he said. ‘I’ll see it gets back to Ted Balham.’
The key would never get back to Ted Balham because he was dead. Annie wouldn’t be the one to tell the colonel. But it wasn’t a bad compromise. She hoped Pat would agree as she handed it over.
Chapter 24
The plan for clandestine interrogation of the three girls hadn’t worked out, but Annie knew just where to go for information on Elizabeth Atkins.
‘Annie, I wasn’t expecting you today,’ said Doris Kitson. ‘Is it about poor Charles?’
‘There was something else I wanted to ask you, but yes, it’s tragic about Mr Tremlow. I wonder what made him do it.’
‘He was always highly strung. You’ll sit down for a cup of tea, won’t you? His mother sent him away to school, you know.’
‘Yes, you told me that before.’
‘It’s always a mistake. Now promise me you won’t send any of your children away to school. Well, you won’t, will you? Not with the example of poor Charles in front of you. And then his wife, too. A travelling salesman.’
‘It was all such a long time ago, though,’ Annie pointed out, as Doris waved her to a seat at the scrubbed wooden table.
‘Ah yes, time. A great healer but a great deceiver, too. Of course, I shall step into the breach. It’ll be hard but I’ll manage. I’ll have to delegate. What’s that new word they all use now? Subsidiarity. That’s what we need round here if the Christmas Fayre isn’t to suffer.’
Annie said nothing. Had Doris completely lost her marbles or was she, Annie, not as fluent in Milesthorpe-speak as she’d thought. Christmas Fayre? It was barely August. She cleared her throat. ‘Doris, last time I was here, you told me something about a friend of yours. Elizabeth Atkins.’
Doris placed a tray with teapot, cups, saucers and milk jug on the table. ‘Elizabeth died years ago, dear. You wouldn’t be interested in her.’
‘You told me you weren’t satisfied her death was from natural causes.’
‘Well, maybe I was hasty. She was quite an age. It’s all been very upsetting, what with Charles and everything. And now people are saying Ted’s died. Is it true? Did they really find him in that building on the cliff? Do you know about it?’ Doris spoke fretfully.
So word had begun to leak out, but Annie wouldn’t pour fuel on the rumour fire. ‘As far as I know he hasn’t been seen for about three weeks, but that’s all I know. What have you heard?’
‘Oh, just people gossiping. You know how they do. Three weeks though. It’s a long time. He hasn’t been off for this long before.’
Just like the colonel, Doris was distracted and not the robust person Annie had first met. ‘About Elizabeth Atkins,’ she prompted.
‘Yes, dear. Elizabeth died a rich woman and she left a considerable sum of money to Milesthorpe church.’
The church again. Annie tried to think herself into Terry Martin’s head. Had he known Elizabeth Atkins before she died?
No, Doris was clear on that, but she might have talked to Terry Martin about Elizabeth. ‘He was interested in the church wardens.’
‘What have the church wardens to do with it?’
‘She left her money in trust and they have it to administer.’ Doris shook her head. ‘If only she’d left it to someone more practical … Those gates …’
Annie took it that by someone more practical Doris meant herself, and thought back to the paperwork she’d seen in some of the offices where she’d worked.
‘In my experience …’ It felt odd to talk about previous experience. She didn’t think she had any. Maybe those bits of jobs had taught her something after all. ‘… money left in trust can take years to untangle.’